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Tae Hea Nahm is a founding general partner of Storm Ventures, an early-stage firm focused on mobile and SaaS. He helped steer marketing automation giant, Marketo to a $1 billion IPO in 2013 and incubated MobileIron a probable soon-to-be unicorn when it goes public this year. Nahm worked closely with MobileIron’s CEO Bob Tinker, who was previously the first hired business executive at Airespace, another Storm Ventures company, which sold to Cisco for $450 million in 2005.

Here he shares with Forbes the secrets of his ‘tidal wave’ approach to investing, why the best CEOs have a split personality and the reason Korea is the best place to go for the next big thing.

The CEO Personality Problem

“Early-stage investing is risky and you’re often dealing with first-time entrepreneurs,” says Nahm. “As a startup you’re always feeling like you’re being outmanned and outspent by the competition, so CEOs are down a lot.”

“The most important thing is to be positive,” says Nahm. He likes to remind them of Shakespeare’s history play Henry V in which the English army faces down the French army - outnumbered, sick and exhausted after a 200 mile march to Agincourt. The English prevail thanks to the rallying speech given by Henry V, whose rousing words win the day.

“Shakespeare's Henry V speaks of glory, honor and brotherhood after war. I see the same glory, honor and brotherhood after every successful startup, especially if the startup had several near-death struggles like the Battle of Agincourt,” he says.

Tae Hea Nahm, Managing Director, Storm Ventures.

You also need to have a split personality if you’re going to be a successful CEO, thinks Nahm.

Outwardly they need to be a Moses-like character with “such passion and faith that they will do the impossible” but inside they must be Galileo, “a heretic, someone that will peruse all doubts.”

“This is the whole idea of leadership,” says Nahm. “If you back a CEO who is completely driven by passion they’ll run the company off a cliff, but if you come across as a doubting heretic people will think the company’s not going to make it and the board members lose faith.”

“The CEO is such a lonely job,” says Nahm. “You’ve got to constantly reconcile faith and doubt.” After about 30 days “the spouse doesn’t want to hear about it,” he says, adding that his background as an attorney gave him good training in this regard.

The CEO has to be willing to understand bad news, says Nahm. If a classic Vice President of Sales, someone who is evangelical and a great closer becomes CEO, there’s a real chance they could run the company off the cliff, something Nahm’s seen firsthand.

For tech companies that could mean rushing ahead to build up huge inventories before the bugs are ironed out, or hiring a large salesforce before things are totally ready, causing the company to burn cash and miss targets.

On the opposite end of the scale, over-intellectualizing can be just as dangerous. “These people are very professional and want to share with you all the risks and concerns they have, as well as with the founders and executive team; but the employees and backers begin to wonder – is the person really in?”

The Tidal Wave Philosophy Of Investing

As an early stage investor, Nahm is always betting on identifying a market before it becomes hot. Understanding when the time is right to surf the wave relies on spotting the ripples in the pond and timing is everything.